Adapting Question Mapping as a Methodology to Help Make Sense of a Community's Collective Wisdom and Shared Futures

by

Erna Gelles and Richard F. Ludeman

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology for making sense of the issues discussed at a west coast nonprofit leadership summit in the economic downturn in the years following 9/11.[1] A real time organizational development tool was employed retrospectively to help frame the fundamental questions raised by the region's leaders about community needs and the sector's role in meeting them. Following a brief description of the Summit, the methodology is presented. The article then considers how this approach differs from other frameworks for encouraging and analyzing discourse as well as how it was adapted post hoc. The technique is both a heuristic device and a guide with potential for synthesizing community issues in real time or retrospectively. The categorization schema provides a framework for deliberative dialogue and action as well as many potential nonprofit research agendas for the coming years.

[1]Particular thanks to Dennis Morrow and Marc Smiley for the conceptual groundwork that resulted in the Leadership Summit and their facilitation at the event, to Alisha Lund-Chaix and Sharon Hasenjaeger for their instrumental and essential work in making it happen and to Oregon Public Radio for recording the fishbowl conversations.